Abstract
According to Mammen and Mironenko (2015) our sensitivity to objects’ history (i.e., objects’ whereabouts across space and time) has been neglected in much of contemporary psychology. In this paper I present evidence from a developmental psychological perspective indicating that although the terminology is different, some research concerning these important issues has actually been conducted. First, research primarily under the heading ‘essentialism’ has shown that children are sensitive to at least some aspects of an object’s history. Second, research on object individuation has revealed that for infants spatiotemporal information appears to have primacy relative to featural information. Finally, research on episodic development has provided evidence that a continuous (hence historical) sense of ‘me’ may be a necessary, although not sufficient, precondition in order to have episodic memories. It is argued that the available evidence converges, which only underscores the relevance and importance of the issues raised by Mammen and Mironenko (2015).
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Notes
For the sake of convenience I in this paper use the terms ‘objects’ whereabouts across space and time’ and ‘spatiotemporal information on objects’ as synonyms. The latter has typically been used in the developmental literature.
When employing the so-called wide-screen/narrow-screen design (which is a simpler design where the cognitive load to the infants is reduced considerably), younger infants appear to be able to individuate objects based of their properties (Wilcox & Baillargeon, 1998a, 1998b; but see Krøjgaard, Kingo, & Staugaard, 2013, for only a partial replication and an alternative interpretation). However, the wide-screen/narrow-screen design does not allow for a direct comparison of object individuation by means of either features or spatiotemporal information and is therefore not discussed further in the present context.
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Acknowledgments
This article was supported by the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF93). I would like to thank Osman S. Kingo for constructive comments to an earlier version of the manuscript.
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Krøjgaard, P. Keeping Track of Individuals: Insights from Developmental Psychology. Integr. psych. behav. 50, 264–276 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-015-9340-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-015-9340-4